Thank you, Techsmith, for supporting me and the NCS K4 STEMLAB!
I am proud to announce that Techsmith’s Camtasia Studio is the official screen capture / flipped lesson recording environment for the NCS K4STEMLAB! Version 8, announced in June 2012, has many new features and all the production capabilities we could ever need. This includes importing from external devices/recordings, content animation, and support for interactive elements (quizzes & more!) Techsmith is providing me (not NCS) a free personal copy of Camtasia Studio 8 because I am a Google Certified Teacher. I’m happy to recognize them as a partner on the NCS K4 STEMLAB project!
Kevin-
Never met you before but have been reading your blog for a few years and am excited to be following your new efforts on your lab remake. Very exciting to see its progress. I hope to do the same thing in the near future. Sounds you are big on the MakeSpace book. Did you get lots of ideas from it or did it give you more of a big picture mindset?
Mark in Cinci
Hi Mark! Thanks for the kind words. We’re very excited too. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, literally the convergence of many, many technological, environmental, logistical and strategic forces at the district level. Louis Pasteur said “fortune favors the prepared mind.” I’ve been preparing for this moment for ten years – I just never knew it.
Make Space was recommended to me by several different people. Reading it, I felt like a kid in a candy store. Tons of ideas AND influence on my overall mindset. I never considered myself much of a ‘maker’ but I do love tinkering and taking things apart (like my ’97 Camry, lol, now with 220k on the odometer.) What really excites me though is the thought of unleashing the tinkerer/maker in my students.
There are other great books on design, The Third Teacher and another that is at home whose title I can’t recall. Will post it later.
Clearly, though, the most powerful force on our design thinking so far has been (and will continue to be) the people in my Personal Learning Network. It’s been incredibly gratifying to connect with so many talented people who want to help make this experience all it can be for our kids!
What are your interests in this area? The beauty of the ideas in Make Space is they are easily scalable and can be incorporated into any classroom.
-kj-
Kevin-
I teach tech to grades 3-5. Our curric. has traditionally been basically Office. However, I have been pushing for the move into the cloud. Finally have 2 grades moved over the Google Apps. I am especially interested in learning how you differentiate your curriculum. When I teach office there are plenty of kids who have never seen it and need, while there are also others who already know much of what I teach or can move thru the materials much faster. I would like to redesign my curriculum as a repository of learning and allow students some choice in what and how they navigate that content. Looking forward to that 3rd influential book. Although I have hardly met anyone on my PLN I continue to learn from them everyday.
Hi Mark, thanks for the comment. Congrats on getting two of your grades into the cloud! 4th & 5th, I presume? How has that gone for you? What have you learned? Any advice for me?
I, too, am interested in how I will differentiate my curriculum – because I haven’t done it yet.
I have a blog post in my mind on this topic, might get it done this week, maybe next.
At the core, I envision a library of screencasts (created by me) housed in some sort of learning management system (LMS), probably Edmodo, but it might be another tool … which students will self-navigate to find the lesson instructions, explanatory screencasts, printable materials, maybe even finished examples. I want to create an experience, a learning ecosystem, that is totally learner-driven, giving those who are comfortable and know what to do the chance to do it – while freeing me and any other adults in the room to assist those who have questions or learn best person-to-person.
Atomic Learning’s library of screencasts is a good reference point, but video instruction is only one part of the ecosystem. I need to think about feedback loops, assessment, task flow, collaboration/group work potential and more. Moving all this into the cloud means kids will be able to tackle this stuff anytime, anywhere – at their own pace. It will be the first time we’ll have “homework” in my class. I have a feeling it is going to be the most enjoyable homework they’ve ever experienced.
Thanks for joining the conversation! Stay tuned!
-kj-
p.s. the third design book I mentioned was The Language of School Design. Loved it!